Where did the word pickle come from?

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English got the word pickle from Middle Low German pekel, which means "sharp in taste". Words like pike and picket also derive from the same source as pickle. That source, an Indo-European root, is (s)peik- "sharp point". The metaphorical sharpness in pickles is, of course, their vinegary taste. The word entered English in the 14th century. And their Freakin delicious!!! =)

Pickles are actually cucumbers that are fermented in vinagar or brine to preserve them. That is where they get their sour taste. It is not known specifically where the picklin…g process comes from, however the earliest known use of the term originates from somewhere in central Europe circa 1440 A.D.

pickles are small cucombers that are picked befor they mature then are soaked in differant types of brine for certain amounts of time then sold in large cities by a pickle mon…ger or in good German delicatessans . large quanties are sold to food corporations who age them in their own secretive way

Shakespeare does not use those exact words, but here are some similar uses. Thou shalt be whipp'd with wire, and stew'd in brine, Smarting in lingering pickle. (Antony and… Cleopatra, II, 5) How camest thou in this pickle? (The Tempest, V, 1) I have been in such a pickle since I saw you last that, I fear me, will never out of my bones (The Tempest, V, 1) .
In the quotation from Antony and Cleopatra, the "pickle" is the same as "brine", salty water which aids preservation of vegetables etc. In the quotations from The Tempest, the idea is that Trinculo is "pickled", which is to say, drunk. The same implication is given in Twelfth Night, when Sir Toby says "A plague o' these pickled herring." The idea is that it is Sir Toby and not the herring that is pickled. Shakespeare does not use the phrase in the sense of being in trouble or a tricky situation.

it came from the 1850's when a counrty girl was in a disaster after losing the ones she loved. she was eating a pickle just then when she was in the diaster. so she said i'm i…n a pretty pickle today, and she ment she was in trouble. she chose the word pretty beacuse it was the oposite of here disater, the trouble she was in isn't pretty at all.